1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the electronic commerce of virtual property. More specifically, this invention pertains to a method and apparatus for conducting electronic business, wherein the merchant manages use, sale, and ownership of virtual property that permanently resides on the merchant's computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
For many years, the global retail market has been characterized as a market in which physical products are sold from physical locations. In recent years, however, this dynamic has undergone a significant change in response to the increasing popularity of the Internet. It should be appreciated that the Internet is defined here as a collection of interconnected (public and/or private) networks linked together by a set of standard protocols (such as TCP/IP and HTTP) to form a global, distributed network. While this term is intended to refer to what is now commonly known as the Internet, it is also intended to encompass variations which may be made in the future, including changes and additions to existing standard protocols. As a result of the Internet, businesses can now sell their products to a vast number of customers beyond local boundaries. This form of business transaction is commonly known as electronic commerce and will herein be referred to as such. Systems for wide-area networks, such as the Internet, are presently limited, however, in the offerings that are made available to businesses and consumers. Present sales systems generally allow for the sale of physical goods or services, or for the purchase of a membership to access certain information or services.
Furthermore, the rapid growth of digital technology has introduced a new line of products that can be delivered in the form of digital information (e.g., music, paintings, movies, software, etc.). Digital information has a unique characteristic in that it can be copied by the owner an infinite number of times while the owner still retains the original. Music in a compact disc, for example, is simply stored digital information with each binary bit represented as the presence or absence of a sequence of holes (i.e., depressions that reflect light) appropriately located on the disc. As is generally known in the art, this same sequence can also be downloaded onto a computer. If this computer is equipped with software capable of decoding such sequences, the information represented by this sequence can be readily accessible. Commercial systems are available to purchase and download digital information via the Internet directly into a computing or entertainment system, thereby eliminating the need for physical embodiments of such products (e.g., discs, tapes, etc.).
An alternative to selling digital information is to sell subscriptions or memberships to sites that supply digital information. These membership sites do not sell ownership of the digital information, but merely allow access to the content that they display. For many types of information, such as news that only has value for a short period of time, a membership or subscription provides an attractive solution for many consumers.
Another type of digital information exists that is referred to herein as virtual property. Unlike the aforementioned forms of digital information, virtual property has no counterpart in the physical world and exists only within the virtual realm. For example, it is known in the art to provide a multi-player game managed by a server operating on the Internet. The players would access the game through their computing devices connected to the Internet. Within the context of the game, players may create a persona or character that has certain characteristics, strengths, and capabilities. Players may also obtain certain objects (e.g., keys, weapons, etc.) in the course of the game. These character attributes and objects have no counterpart in the physical world and only have value in the virtual world associated with the game. Although there is some intrinsic value for these character attributes and objects, there is no market for such virtual property and hence no way to transfer ownership or use.
In general, two issues arise when dealing with virtual property. First, a business must concern itself with the unauthorized copying of these properties. By sending a copy of the virtual property to the buyer or subscriber, the merchant loses control of the data, making possible the duplication and distribution of illegal copies of the property, for which the merchant is not compensated. Second, a business is limited to selling its virtual properties to those consumers with computing resources capable of decoding different types of digital data and capable of storing this data. With the increasing popularity of the mobile workstation (with limited computing resources), this issue becomes even more prevalent.
Currently, no system exists that allows the purchase and ownership of property rights that are entirely digital in nature and that have no value outside of the digital environment in which they exist. Furthermore, no system exists where such properties are maintained by the merchant and are not downloaded to the buyer's computer. It would thus be advantageous to implement a virtual marketplace where these virtual property rights can be transferred, used, and managed requiring minimal computing resources from the consumer and where merchants are protected from the unauthorized duplication of their virtual properties.